“Closed” vs. “Open” Social Networking And How It Applies To Path and Instagram | Hacker News Reader

“Closed” vs. “Open” Social Networking And How It Applies To Path and Instagram

andre.io

7 pointsandre3k15 comments

I think it's more appropriate to think of Instagram as similar to Twitter rather than MySpace. And once you do, the analogy breaks down.

Path is great for super personal stuff, and the 50 user limit is good for that. Instagram is more like Twitter, where you can take interesting photos and anybody can follow you.

I was actually going to include a reference to Twitter in the original post, but I edited it out of the final draft. Here's what I had written up:

>Twitter isn’t social networking, Twitter is blogging. Therefore, the “closed” social networking argument does not apply.

>With blogging you wish to share everything you can with the rest of the world. The same can be said for Twitter. The Twitterverse, like the blogosphere, is a place to go and get educated. In these two scenarios, an “open” system trumps any and all closed-systems.

>Remember, a social network provides no real value other than fulfilling a social need. The blogosphere and the Twitterverse provide much more.

All the Social networking sites eventually start being used as marketing platform by the people. Take facebook for example; things are no more constrained to being social there, people find gratification when more and more people are friends with them and interact with them. I know a lot of people who have more than 3000 friends on their FB profile. Now, is there anyway to actually be friends with 3000+ people in reality. IMHO no. People do this either to promote their blog or product. FB pages might be an argument for this, but that does not stop marketeers from being friends with Random people.

As far as privacy goes, I ll just repeat the cliche = "don't share something in public which might hurt you later"

Given how much baggage the words "closed" and "open" have in software development, I'm not sure it's wise to use them as this article does - as stand ins for "public" and "private".

Thanks for the feedback. You make a valid point. Have taken your reply into consideration and changed out the words "closed" and "open" for "private" and "public".

Unfortunately, the title on HN cannot be changed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com